Universal suffrage and equal rights for everyone from the river to the sea. That, as a basic universal principle that any reasonable person wherever in the world can assert as the basic requirement for democracy. If you don’t like that, you’re against democracy, and I don’t know if anything else can be discussed.

The details beyond that are not for me to decide.

They stay right where they are. They may need to pay reparations to Palestinians they displaced however, and any laws restricting land ownership or buying and selling to Jews should be abolished.

I really don’t understand how ending apartheid is an escalation from where we are now. It’s precisely the opposite: de-escalation and peace.

We are living the genocide moment, right now, and we have been living it for several decades. This is about ending this genocidal status quo. What the fuck are you talking about?

You bringing up the Bosnian Genocide reinforces my point rather than undercut it.

The Bosnian genocide happened, just like the Nakba did (or arguably still is) and still after it happened, the Bosnia and Herzegovina of today exists. In Bosnia today Serbs and Muslims coexist, even if Serbs massacred the Muslims in the past. Same for Israelis and Palestinians: the Bosnia of today is a case study of what an Israel/Palestine of tomorrow might look like.

That’s exactly why I mentioned Bosnia and Ireland in the first place.

You hit the nail squarely on the head.

We obviously also disagree on what causes the conflict. I don’t see it as a clash between opposing cultures, which by definition is irreconcilable. It is a clash over land, over sovereignty, over rights, over resources. These can of course be resolved and have been resolved even at least tentatively in many countries in the region. With justice can come peace.

If Serbs and Muslims can coexist in Bosnia, if Macedonians and Albanians can coexist in North Macedonia, if Protestants and Catholics can coexist in Northern Ireland, if Flemings and Waloons can coexist in Belgium, if the various denominations can coexist in Lebanon, if English and French can coexist in Quebec, then Israelis and Palestinians can work it out as well. Note that the above examples are at a varying degree of peace and harmony, from not very much to quite a lot. But none of them are genocidal cases. In fact, a couple are societies that coexist after a genocide took place (Bosnia, Ireland).

Yes, it is the Fatah line as well. If it were feasible, I would also support it. However, Israeli created “facts on the ground” say it isn’t. It is impossible to extract the entrenched colonists from the West Bank and it is impossible for Israel to accept a sovereign Palestine that is anything more than a Bantustan. Worse, it might just mean that Israel will have not one but two Gazas on its doorstep. It’s a recipe for more death and destruction.

The 2SS was reasonable 30 years ago. That time has very sadly passed. Just like the Palestinians lost their chance in '48, so did the Israelis lose their chance at Camp David in 2000. The current mess is a knot that can only be solved by a single state solution. And if that is the case, and we agree that either side “cleansing” the other is completely unacceptable, then universal equality from the river to the sea, a democratic country, is the only game left.

Israeli jews have the right to life, freedom, safety. They have the right to a home in the Holy Lands.

They don’t have the right to set up a Jewish supremacist apartheid state to deny the same rights to everyone else.

The state that they have created and entrenched with genocide and “facts on the ground” no longer has legitimacy to exist in its present form. Because of its entrenchment I don’t see how it can be reformed.

So instead, ending this political entity to establish a new democratic one seems to be the surest way out of this mess.

This is not a call for genocide by any stretch of imagination.

Wake me up when Israel institutes universal suffrage and legal equality for everyone from the river to the sea, elects Marwan Barghouthi as president and changes it flag and anthem to incorporate Palestinian national symbolism. If such a country would like to still call itself Israel, I will be happy to be proven wrong.

Because this is what ending apartheid means, buddy. Not just getting rid of Netanyahu, but deep structural change, and a commitment to justice, truth and reconciliation.

The majority of European antisémites have zero problem with the existence of Israel “out there”. They are more than happy to see the Jews leave Europe for the middle east. American antisémites are fantasizing that Israel will be the site of the Second Coming of Christ who will then turn all the Jews into Christians.

This observation alone should tell you everything about why it is stupid and wrong to use attitudes towards Israel as proxy measures for attitudes towards Jews. When the antisémites pass your metric with flying colours whereas Jewish anti-Zionists fail it, your metric is just shit, simple as that.

This is Germany’s “special history” with the Palestinians being created right now. This. This supporting and enabling their genocide.

White South Africa did not have the right to exist. Rhodesia did not have a right to exist.

That’s what we are talking about.

Israel has become a Jewish supremacist apartheid state. Its crimes have become so egregious and so entrenched (“facts on the ground”) that it is not unreasonable to argue that it cannot be reformed in its present form. In this case it is reasonable to argue for its replacement by a democratic successor state in which Jews and others will all have the same rights to freedom and safety.

Denying the right of the Jewish state to exist is not denying the right of the Jewish people to exist IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as denying the right of white Afrikaner South Africa to exist is not a call for the genocide of white Afrikaners.

Afrikaners have a right to life and a right to safety. They don’t have the right to set up an Afrikaner ethnostate on top of the rest of the people who inhabit the land.

Germany is right 100% to combat antisemitism. They are wrong, entirely wrong, to use recognition of Israel as a metric to detect it. It is in fact extremely dangerous and ultimately a generator of antisemitism. Attitudes towards Israel should never be used as proxy for attitudes towards Jews. Anti-semitism is irrational and atavistic at its core. Opposition to the existence of Israel as such is a spectrum of nuanced, but rational positions about land, rights, justice and so on. By lumping in rational arguments with atavistic feelings, they are giving the legitimacy of reason to Anti-semitism.

In fact the majority of European antisémites have zero problem with the existence of Israel “out there”. They are more than happy to see the Jews leave Europe for the middle east. American antisémites are fantasizing that Israel will be the site of the Second Coming of Christ who will then turn all the Jews into Christians. This observation alone should tell you everything about why it is stupid and wrong to use attitudes towards Israel as proxy measures for attitudes towards Jews. When the antisémites pass your metric with flying colours whereas Jewish anti-Zionists fail it, your metric is just shit, simple as that.

Germany is making an extremely dangerous choice here, when they really don’t need to. They don’t have to take a maximalist pro-revisionist-zionism position. They are in fact taking sides in an internal debate between Jews and picking and choosing certain Jews as good and others as bad. Under these statutes Jewish people who speak out against Zionism are automatically labelled as … antisémites.

This is wrong wrong wrong in every way and it makes the world worse for Jews first and foremost.

I didn’t say it’s a random state, I said it was a particular one. It is one particular expression of Jewishness, when others also exist. Precisely because of the history of Germany, the German state has no business whatsoever to play arbiter about which version of Jewishness is the most authentic.

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

Germany equating its historic debt to Jewish people with support for a particular state is an absolutely disgusting distortion of the German obligation of remembrance.

Just like this, they throw under the bus any anti-Zionist Jew.

Honestly, when it comes to Israel/Palestine, the German state should just do what their other genocide victim, Namibia, told them to do and Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Stay the fuck out of it. Say the honorable thing that you will abide by the rulings of international courts. Provide humanitarian aid, help refugees and displaced people. Be a ray of light and humanity, not a stickler for rules and definitions. Don’t be so goddamn fucking German for a change.

How was Iraq a proxy war?

Arguably, a much more critical job for a capital-intensive army.

Unsurprisingly, that’s when your interlocutor disappears from the conversation and you’re not going to get a response, obviously.